Rob Laycock

Retired turf and golf course agronomist based in @northyorkmoors , Fellow @CIHort. Joint owner @damsoncroftcottage holiday cottage.

[ALASTAIR CAMPBELL @campbellclaret]

Rupert sparing to the heights of oratory we come to expect from great leaders. Ps Rupe is King Charles a white Briton? And why are you so thin-skinned? Tara Muskpuppet x

[Black Joan @sunpath2]

" . . there must surely be some security worries about a BA system which shows a passenger as on board, a no show and still hovering somewhere over the Atlantic — all at the same time." 🙄😱

[Rob Laycock @robert_laycock]

@Snowdropman We have so many of them in Lastingham too!

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

My colleagues & I have taken a huge gamble to set up @thenerve_news. We’re trying to build a new independent publication from the ground up. Social media is our only distribution for now.

Sharing this article in your networks would make a huge difference. Thank you! 🙏🙏🙏

[Rob Laycock @robert_laycock]

@helloKi30596224 Think how many flags they could have bought!

[Tolkien World @TolkienWorldG]

Sir Ian McKellen at 86 expertly reciting Shakespeare last night!

[Equitable Members Action Group @EMAGnews]

Our continuing campaign for justice highlighted in @thetimes - thank you for covering our story.

https://t.co/XBCbESVzh7

#maladministration #equitablelife #settlethedebt

[BBKA @britishbee]

Yellow-legged Asian hornet tracking information, written by expert Sarah Bunker, can be found on the BBKA's Member Hub. This may be helpful information in 2026.

[Equitable Members Action Group @EMAGnews]

It is 25 years to the day since #equitablelife closed to new business, throwing over a million people’s retirement plans into the air.

It took victims 4 years to get a proper investigation into what went wrong.

It took them another 4 years to get the answer – Equitable Life collapsed because of a catastrophic failure of regulation spanning a decade.

Only 10 years after the collapse did the Government take responsibility for the failure and accept how much people lost as a result.

Hundreds of thousands of victims are still owed 78% of what the Government itself calculated they that they lost.

And to rub salt into the wound, of the limited compensation that was announced, over 10% is set to be pocketed by the Treasury.

Shamefully, tens of thousands have died without justice or the retirement they worked so hard for and saved for responsibly.

We will not stop until the government does the right thing and pays up.

#equitablelife #maladministration #justice #fairness

[Rob Laycock @robert_laycock]

@kevinhollinrake Thank you Kevin

[Protect Kamala Harris ✊ @DisavowTrump20]

RETWEET if you stand with President Zelensky!

[James Taylor @JamesTaylor_com]

"I always hesitate to bring my political beliefs into this space. I don’t think my listeners would expect that from me and some of you will find it disappointing: not what you were looking for... "

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[George Monbiot @GeorgeMonbiot]

This is my farewell post. I am not deleting this account, as I don’t want to lose the archive, and I don’t want my name taken by imposters. But, for as long as Musk owns the platform, I’ll no longer use it. I’m now posting at https://t.co/0iVBaQEKGy.

Since Elon Musk bought this site, he has transformed it from one on which millions could converse as equals into his personal megaphone. Now the world’s richest man uses it to wage his class war, transferring blame for the ills of capitalism onto vulnerable minorities, boosting the grimmest and most antisocial accounts while suppressing the humane voices with whom he disagrees.

He has used X not only to subvert the election for the US presidency, but to create a role for himself in US politics which, though he has never stood for election and would not be eligible, grants him immense power over the citizens of that nation. This site has been used as a tool to help replace democracy with oligarchy.

Musk claimed, on purchasing the platform, to be a “free speech absolutist”. He is in fact a prolific censor, suspending dissenting accounts and using lawsuits to shut down free speech, while employing an algorithm to increase the reach of his own posts 1,000-fold. He cannot abide a level playing field.

He has permitted or encouraged the growth of a ghost army of bots and trolls to degrade the experience of all who disagree with him. Their task is not just to abuse opponents but, perhaps more importantly, to drown intelligent conversation with a tsunami of stupidity. They respond to data with denial, expertise with execration, insight with insult, humour with hatred and thinking with thuggery. They suck the meaning out of everything. The stupidity trends in one direction: in the service of economic power. It is a weapon used to suppress the possibility of a better world.

Many years ago, when I lived in Brazil, I learnt that the military dictatorship had actively sought to suppress educational levels in schools, as it saw a well-informed population as a political threat. A confused, distracted and ignorant population is easy to manipulate. Now this counter-educational model is being rolled out worldwide, and Elon Musk is its primary sponsor.

I stayed here long after I first considered leaving, as I believed it was wrong to cede the ground to an oligarch and his minions. But I came to see that those of us who do not subscribe to Musk’s grim project are being used as groundbait: stimulating the feeding frenzy of 15-minute, 24-hour hate that now powers this platform. We can no longer build anything of value here. Brute force – the unmediated power of money – has beaten humanity, intelligence, humour and democracy.

On Bluesky I can be the person I want to be, a better person than I am on X, where it is almost impossible not to get dragged into the mud. I feel I can be understood because I am not confronting a deliberate effort to misunderstand me. So I can speak more quietly.

There is no guarantee that Bluesky will not also one day be monetised by its owners or captured by self-serving billionaires. But for now it remains a place in which interesting and enjoyable conversations can be had, kindness can be shown to strangers and a better world can be imagined. I hope to see you there.

[Rob Laycock @robert_laycock]

@crawley_mick I was at Silwood in the summer of 1974 and it looked even more different then!

[Seeds of Italy - Paolo #FBPE 🇺🇦 @FranchiSeedsUK]

We had 40 tomato seed varieties last year. This year 4. We had 26 peppers and chillies last year. This year 1. That's the reality of brexit. Mass shortages of some seeds across horti already.

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

One month before Russia invaded Ukraine, I stood trial at the High Court. And now I wait, in purgatory, to be judged.

But I believe this trial and the silence around it - & all the Kremlin's men - has revealed something profoundly rotten at the heart of the British state.
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[Peter Stefanovic @PeterStefanovi2]

“Your figures are wrong” Government Minster James Cleverly tells @KayBurley on the number of individuals with links to Putin sanctioned by the Government

No she wasn’t! Boris Johnson lied to Parliament (again). WATCH

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

NEW: Banning Facebook & criminalising journalism are not just the actions of a desperate man, they’re the equivalent of putting on a pair of bell-bottoms & dad-dancing across the internet.

Why I think Putin just lost the information war 👇

https://t.co/FyUEy1wUhG

[Deborah Meaden 🇺🇦 @DeborahMeaden]

Well @BorisJohnson when do we actually do something? This looks either weak or worse.

[ALASTAIR CAMPBELL @campbellclaret]

There is a stench to this that really needs exploring. It is a story that goes back over a decade of Tory government.